


the darling electric

by heartcondition



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Feelings Realization, Lightning - Freeform, M/M, Mild Absurdism, Power Outages, Spontaneous Powers Acquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 10:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19766713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartcondition/pseuds/heartcondition
Summary: Soonyoung turns twenty-three, witnesses the worst storm anybody in Seoul has seen since the nineties, and decides he's giving the fuck up on love.





	the darling electric

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. this fic hinges on a level of coincidence and hand-wavingness so high it borders on absurdism...and thats ok just be who you are.  
> 2\. enjoy!!

“The bolt traveled up your left leg, shot through your heart, and exited your body via your right heel,” the nurse says.

Soonyoung’s head hurts. He’s already been checked for a concussion, but his head fucking _hurts._ Feels like a fruit being slowly juiced. And also simultaneously being set on fire. Burnt citrus isn’t a popular gum or beverage flavor for a reason—that shit is just not pleasant.

The nurse, oblivious, barrels on. “Your heart stopped in the field, but paramedics managed to revive you fairly quickly, so any permanent brain damage due to oxygen deprivation is unlikely. Your left eardrum ruptured, but that will simply heal itself within a week or two. The hyphema is fairly minor, and will heal itself in a similar timeframe.” She glances at his chart, flipping the papers up over the clip and back again. “Your burns, luckily, are all superficial. We’ve prescribed an antibiotic ointment to treat them, and if it’s not too painful, we’ll give you some gauze before we release you to cover them with, which will need to be replaced regularly. Any questions?”

Soonyoung opens his mouth, then closes it. Thinks hard, past the fizzly feeling making all his thoughts leak out his damn ears. The nurse stares at him expectantly, raising one brow. Soonyoung raises both. “I _died?_ ” he says finally, incredulous.

The nurse smiles thinly. “Technically, I suppose, yes.” She glances behind her, past the flimsy curtain separating Soonyoung from the rest of the emergency room, and stands to leave. “Your friend who came in with you has your shoes and your clothes, though both are, well—pretty much destroyed. I can probably snag you a new outfit from the lost and found, or hunt down some spare scrubs.” She glances behind her as Minghao timidly opens the curtain, makes him freeze in place. “An attending will be by to sign your release forms and answer any remaining questions shortly.”

Damn. Those were Soonyoung’s favorite sneakers. 

Minghao lets the nurse pass and quietly steps inside. He gives Soonyoung a long look-over. Like, holy shit. Like, I just watched you die, you stupid fuck. He’s got Soonyoung’s melted trainers and vaporized birthday getup in an impossibly thin plastic bag, which crinkles faintly as he takes another step to grab the rail at the end of the bed. He looks like he’s been anxiously carding his bangs back, scrubbing a hand down his face. Maybe Soonyoung’s just having a shit day, but he’s pretty much the best thing Soonyoung’s ever seen. The feeling hits him like a load bearing wall falling over—steel beams, his own personal earthquake.

“So, I just died,” Soonyoung says, staring at Minghao’s face. He can’t figure out if his expression is more relieved, pissed off, or upset, the micro-clues metronoming back and forth every other second. He must be going through the six stages of lightning strike adjacent grief, or something. Maybe there’s a pamphlet for it somewhere on a table in the lobby. Minghao looks at Soonyoung’s feet, the bright red burns zigzagging up his ankles and the sides of his calves, huffing out a breath through his nose. Relieved, then, Soonyoung supposes. That’s his final answer.

Soonyoung stares at Minghao a little longer, thinking he can blame it on some shit like nerve damage if he has to, indexing the slope of his nose, the tilt to his mouth. Minghao still hasn’t said anything. As a general rule, this means Soonyoung has entered dangerous territory—he’s not supposed to be the eloquent one in any scenario. 

Antsy, Soonyoung tries talking again. “I can’t remember what we were doing before this happened,” Soonyoung lies. “Were you and me at the park?”

“I was meeting you at the park,” Minghao confirms, setting the bag down on the papery blanket folded at the foot of the gurney. His poker face immediately wavers. “I didn’t want to meet you outside when the forecast had thunderstorms, but you were being dramatic,” he says. There’s that damn smile. “Acting like the whole world needed to know that ‘ _I, Kwon Soonyoung, am officially giving the fuck up on love!’_ Like a new years resolution, but for turning twenty-three, you were saying.”

Soonyoung sighs. Tries to reach up and scratch at the side of his neck, but his arm mostly feels like he’s repeatedly been hit in the funny bone, so he lets it just lie there. “That sounds like me,” he says, meek. Twenty-two was chock full of flings gone dead in the water and breaking his own heart like he was getting paid for it.

“Well, that’s because it was you,” Minghao says. “I was across the square throwing away the bag for those apple crisp things you like that I brought you, and you were standing under a tree, which was then, I guess, struck by lightning. Ground currents, I looked it up. I must’ve been outside the danger zone.”

“Wow,” says Soonyoung, grinning. “Saved by apple crisps.” Minghao’s face wrinkles further, displeased. Doesn’t make him any less handsome, though. Soonyoung’s totally fucked. “Thanks for calling 119.”

“My pleasure,” says Minghao. It’s not hard to see that he’s biting down a laugh. Soonyoung waggles his eyebrows at him, watches Minghao’s face filter through several stages of grief again, flashing through feelings like a 1990’s viewfinder.

“It’s not funny,” Minghao says sternly. The nurse pulls the curtain back, handing Minghao the extra set of scrubs and a beat up pair of sneakers, not quite looking at either of them.

“It’s kind of funny,” admits Soonyoung. He laughs as he takes the scrubs from him, trying to maneuver one arm out of the hospital gown.

Minghao ignores him with purpose. “Happy birthday,” he says flatly. “Ready to go home?”

If lightning didn't kill him, Soonyoung pretty sure this will. Minghao starts loosening the sneakers for him as Soonyoung works at getting the extra scrubs on, looking away from Soonyoung’s single bare shoulder politely like a scandalized schoolgirl. Soonyoung pulls at the paper tie of the hospital gown, peeling it off. It takes more out of him than he thought it would, and he sits on the edge of the gurney with his stinging feet hanging a few centimeters above the floor, willing his heart rate to slow, slow, slow. Minghao kneels on the nasty tile and maneuvers one shoe on, tying the laces loosely because anyone with two eyes and two brain cells to rub together _knows_ how much it hurts. 

And, alright. Turns out that Soonyoung is a perpetual creature of habit. He made a pact with himself about this less than two hours ago. Minghao's palm cups Sooyoung's heel, doing all the work. Soonyoung’s got a sort of knack for this kind of thing—knowing he’s doomed before he’s been doomed entirely. Knowing when he’s in the moment before The Moment. Minghao finishes tying Soonyoung’s shoe, stands, then grabs Soonyoung’s elbow to help him up, not startling even when his weight topples onto him, body still hot, tingly and numb.

If Soonyoung says he will not love him, he will not love him. 

He won't. 

Soonyoung reaches for the light switch. Flinches as a blue spark crackles to life at his fingertips before he even touches the thing, connecting the plastic to his fingers. He turns the switch on, then off, then on again. Nothing. “Huh,” he says, still wheezy from the flights of stairs. “Power’s out.”

“I thought you already noticed,” says Minghao, slinging half of Soonyoung’s weight on his shoulder in an offer to help him to the couch. “That’s why the hospital was so loud—running on a bunch of generators.”

“Thought I just had tinnitus or something,” replies Soonyoung. “I’ve only got one working eardrum.”

Minghao deposits him onto the cushions, giving him another look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

Soonyoung’s body feels like it’s only partially under his control, shivers zinging through his nervous system every couple seconds, but he got up the stairs without passing out, so. “I mean, the hospital released me, didn’t they?”

Minghao squints. “I guess.”

Soonyoung sags into the couch further, the wear on his body starting to catch up to him again. Minghao’s attention has his earlier realization careening back into focus, but he can’t find it in himself to shy away from it, to cower under its weight. He’s still himself though, so he feels his ears turning beet red and getting hotter. Minghao treads past him towards the kitchen, the sound of him puttering around distorted and difficult to keep track of in Soonyoung’s ears.

“We have to eat everything in your fridge before it goes bad, ‘cause the second I open this it’s going to just keep getting warmer,” Minghao says, opening the creaky freezer door. He pulls out a tub of this chemically pink strawberry ice cream he bought post his last pseudo break-up, half intentionally and half as a joke.“You want this ice cream before it melts?”

Soonyoung peers over the back of the couch. “Sure.”

Minghao fishes around the drawers for some silverware, spoons clinking together in the drawer before he carries one over with the pint. “Here.”

The couch bounces as Minghao sits down next to Soonyoung, peeling the lid off. Soonyoung shoves his spoon into its half eaten, moon-cratered surface to an anticlimactic _crunch._

“Ugh,” Soonyoung says. “Freezer burn.”

Minghao sets the pint down on the coffee table. “Just give it a few minutes.”

Soonyoung sinks back into the pillows, all his sensory responses seemingly travel in the wrong directions. He’s starting to think that the second he eats that ice cream, his brain is going to convince him it's hotter than the very pits of hell itself. “Worst day ever,” Soonyoung says.

“Because of the almost dying part? That’s fair.”

“No, the ice cream. Waiting sucks.”

Minghao laughs. “Well, don’t wait too long. Then it’s just flavoring and milk.”

Soonyoung’s face wrinkles in disgust. “Well now I’m not hungry.” He hands the carton to Minghao.

“I don’t even like ice cream,” Minghao says, shoving the pint back into Soonyoung’s chest.

“I know,” Soonyoung complains, “but can’t you just eat it? It’s gonna get so gross when it melts.”

“Why would that make me want to eat it?” 

Soonyoung shrugs. “‘Cause I asked you to.”

Minghao sighs. “Alright, give it. I’ll leave it in the sink.”

“But that’s so wasteful.”

Minghao’s eyes roll. “Well are you gonna eat it or not?”

Soonyoung considers, the future guilt washing over him already. He sighs. “I’ll eat it,” he says. “Maybe the crunchy ice crystal bits have melted by now.”

“Poor you.”

“Now you’re getting it.” Soonyoung works the spoon through the over-frozen ice cream, and tries to keep his face serene as he chews through the ice chunks. 

“That bad?”

“Kinda.” Soonyoung takes another bite, trying not to laugh and shoot radioactively pink strawberry ice cream out of his nose when Minghao winces at the crunching sound. He brushes his hand back through his overgrown bangs, a force of habit to keep his line of vision clear. Everyone keeps telling Minghao he needs to get his damn hair cut, but Soonyoung insists it looks good long. Even promised Minghao that if he grew it out, the next time his sister visited him, he’d have her teach him how to braid so he could do something cool with it. He looked up tutorials on Naver to attempt it all himself, but Soonyoung’s no good at doing anything unless it already right there in front of him. “There’s haw flakes on top of the fridge if you want any.”

“Thought you hated those.”

Soonyoung shrugs. “You don’t.”

Soonyoung searches around in the hall closet for the battery powered radio his dad insisted he take with him when he first moved out, and starts turning it to the channel number written in smudgy sharpie on a piece of masking tape stuck to the face of it. He searches farther into the closet, shoving aside ratty old towels and sheets he accidentally dyed a funky color in the wash, pulling out a dusty, miniature fan, the panel holding the batteries in loose and in danger of being lost forever. He tucks the radio under his arm.

Soonyoung starts heading towards his bedroom, bursts of confusing pain fizzing up from the soles of his feet to his ankles, shins, knees as he walks onwards. The channel knob ticks and creaks as he twists it, static shifting and clearing.

— _eleven subway lines are down, but public buses are still running. The city is asking that citizens stay off the roads to avoid the dangers of non-operative traffic lights at intersections. KEPCO will be slowly making their way across the city to restore power, grid by grid, but has been unavailable to provide a timeline. Until then, be sure to keep cool in this summer heat and—_

Minghao has stripped out of his shirt and into one of Soonyoung’s ratty old tank-tops he keeps in a low drawer in his bedroom, the old one crumpled on the floor at the foot of Soonyoung’s bed. “Smelled like the hospital,” he says, when he catches Soonyoung squinting at it, wrinkling his nose for emphasis.

Soonyoung sets the fan on the floor next to Minghao, flipping its switch, and lays down on the rug in front of it. Minghao slides down the wall, stretching his legs out as Soonyoung sticks his face in the fan.

“What should we do?” Soonyoung asks, voice turning alien in the moving air. He turns his head to look at Minghao, and his blangs blow sideways across his forehead, obscuring one eye. “My phone’s dead, so I can’t play stupid mobile games anymore.”

“Well I’m not letting you play them on mine,” Minghao says. “What if there’s an emergency and we have to call someone for help?”

“We’d die,” Soonyoung says obediently. 

“Yeah. So no Lineage M on my phone.”

Soonyoung raises a brow. “ _That’s_ the game you think I play?”

“I’ve seen you playing it,” Minghao says, quirking a brow in return.

Soonyoung lays flat onto the floor. “Agh, forget it.” Minghao laughs. “Wouldn’t be able to play my character anyway.”

Minghao crosses his ankles, back straight against the drywall. “We could have _yaja_ time,” he says.

Soonyoung squints at him. “That’s only fun for you.”

“You don’t have fun when we do _yaja_ time?” Soonyoung plucks a leg hair out of Minghao’s ankle with his nails. “Okay, fine. Charades?”

“No fun with only two people.”

“Do you still have that _gonggi_ set laying around somewhere?”

“I lost two of the pieces.”

Minghao sighs. “Twenty questions?”

“Real twenty questions, or your version of twenty questions where you just ask me unrelated things until I admit something embarrassing?”

“Look, I’ve been trying to get you to tell me what you said to Jihoon forever now. It’s been months since it happened and he still looks like he might kill you.”

“ _You_ look. It’s not important and anyways, you’re never getting that out of me.” All the squirming on the carpet has got him charged right up with static, and when he grabs Minghao’s wrist to prevent him from flicking his forehead, the air crackles and pops. 

If he’s being honest, Soonyoung barely remembers what he said to Jihoon all those months ago. Besides, the thing that has Jihoon giving him dead eyes for the rest of eternity is the fact that he had no response to what he said back, talking about the last fling that fell apart or something similar, how he went to Minghao’s apartment directly afterwards, his insides twisted up and wringing out so tightly that it stung— _so you’re still ignoring that?_

How could Jihoon blame him, when Minghao’s always ready to peel him up off the floor or whatever other thing he’s plastered himself against, when he has that brand of toothpaste Soonyoung likes but can never remember the name of by the time he makes it to the store. When it was hard for Soonyoung to realize that he only had a chronic case of an I’m Pretty Sure This Isn’t What Falling In Love Really Feels like kind of feeling because he’s had something better to compare everything to the whole time.

Soonyoung doesn’t know what to do with Minghao’s forearm now that he’d holding it, sliding both hands upwards to clasp around his palm. He folds Minghao’s ring and pinky fingers down, tucks in his thumb, and leaves the last two upright. “Alright,” he says, voice black pepper through the grinder all over again. “Twenty questions. Let’s play that.”

“Is it bigger than a rice cooker?”

“No.”

Minghao adjusts his head against his bicep, the rug leaving patches of his skin a little red and irritated. “Can you eat it?”

Soonyoung makes a face, then erases it. “Yeah.”

Minghao narrows his eyes. “By that I mean; is it _supposed_ to be eaten?”

Soonyoung bites his lip, grinning. “Yeah,” he says, finally. Minghao can usually nail down Soonyoung’s answer in the first ten questions, and that was the only trick he knows in the book. Busted.

“Is it a fruit?” 

Soonyoung rolls from his back to his side, but the movement leaves the room spinning. The doctor said he’d have trouble sleeping, problems concentrating, and maybe even recurring pain, but the dizziness is by far the most annoying so far. “Yep,” Soonyoung says, scrunching his eyes closed to make the rotating stop. The fan tickles the back of his neck. Blind, Soonyoung hears Minghao shift again. When he opens his eyes, Minghao is staring at him, and by the look of it, Soonyoung starts getting the impression that in this scenario, Minghao is the headlights, and he’s the deer.

“Did it hurt?” Minghao says curiously. “Being struck by lightning, I mean.”

“I thought we weren’t playing that version.”

Minghao shrugs, one arm crushed beneath him against the rug. “Answer anyway.”

“It was like being in a microwave,” Soonyoung says. Shits funny, but he’s just being honest. Felt a little like the time he had to get a CT scan back in high school, and the iodine injection made him think half his body was on fire, had his skin melting right off.

“You’ve never been in a microwave,” says Minghao, feigning offense.

Soonyoung smiles, rolling onto his stomach, face turned to the side in the pillow, arms under his head. His body’s been feeling crazy all weekend. Even just putting his heel on the ground feels like repeatedly stepping on a nail. “Well, I figure if I was ever in a microwave, being struck by lightning is what it might be like.”

Minghao touches the part of Soonyoung’s elbow that’s been tingling like petrified TV static for the past couple hours, nail scratching down the dimple of it lightly. “When they revived you,” Minghao says, then stops. He looks at his fingertip on Soonyoung’s arm, then meets Soonyoung’s eye. Normally, Minghao speaks his mind so freely around Soonyoung—sometimes even tests him with honorifics, but now, he’s so careful about it. It’s the same feeling of being talked to by someone who’s out in the hallway just outside your room. “What did that feel like?”

Soonyoung thinks about that one for a while. He hopes the power never comes back on in Itaewon so Minghao never has to go home, staring at him in the faded purple light of dusk cutting daggers between apartment buildings. Love is disgusting, Soonyoung decides, and brutal, and he doesn't understand how people run around doing this shit when it hurts so fucking much. And not real pain-hurt, either, just a never ending taffy-pull, like in gym class when his assigned partner used to crack his spine, bending him backwards with their arms locked together uncomfortably. How every degree further made him feel like his body shouldn’t be able to have dont that, and yet it did. Stretching pain. Shits elastic. Electricity crackles around him, the feel of it raising a few strands of Minghao’s hair. 

So, what did it feel like to be brought back from the dead? Soonyoung touches Minghao's elbow in return. “Not everything can feel like something else.”

“Go sit down,” says Minghao sternly. He takes the dirty plates out of Soonyoung’s hands and shoos him towards the living room. Two hours ago, Soonyoung fell asleep on the floor. In the meantime, Minghao ventured out into the hot, powerless outdoors, and found the convenience store auctioning off the prepackaged lunch boxes after the refrigerators up and died for barely half the price. Score.

When he got home, Soonyoung was still out, and he had a good laugh transferring everything to real plates and trying to convince him he had somehow cooked it all himself, but nobody knows convenience store lunch better than Soonyoung. Minghao can’t pull the wool over _his_ eyes. He knows the look of that shit better than the back of his hand. 

“Sit,” Minghao says again.

Soonyoung doesn’t sit, but he does lean heavily on the kitchen counter. “Fine.”

“That easy?” Minghao asks, grin stretching. “It’s almost like you didn’t want to do the dishes at all.”

“I don't like it when you do everything for me," mutters Soonyoung, heading for the couch. “I mean, I do,” he continues, pausing to look at Minghao with his hands on his hips, “but let me be the hyung for once, okay? I feel like I'm shirking my responsibilities all the time as your elder.”

Minghao’s eyes roll as he turns towards the sink. “Sit _down_. I like doing it. And you were in the hospital less than twenty-four hours ago—I’m not going to go spreading around that you’re a terrible hyung for not jumping at the chance to do the dishes, because you’re not. I don’t mind it. You know that.”

Soonyoung feels his face go hot, thankful that Minghao isn’t looking at him right now. “Fine,” he allows again. Minghao’s only even been truly ill one time in all the years Soonyoung has known him, and all Soonyoung really did then was sit just inside his room with a face mask on and bring him hot tea he’s still certain he never brewed right, even when Minghao kept telling him to stop risking it and just leave. For twenty-four hours he listened to Minghao toss and turn in bed, made him eat, smoothed Minghao’s sweaty bangs back off his forehead every time they started to plaster to his skin.

“I didn’t mind it, either. When you had that flu.”

Minghao smiles, sparing him a warm glance. “You absolutely minded it, but you did it anyway.”

Soonyoung lays back on the couch. “Yeah. It was really gross now that I think about it.”

“Watch it,” chides Minghao. Soonyoung grins. The miniature fan whirs, rotating slowly. He listens to the tap running and the gurgle of the drain. Minghao starts humming.

When Soonyoung catches feelings it makes him want to do weird things, not just talk and kiss and touch; he was once with a girl where one of his favorite things about her was how flat her molars were, smooth as starbursts, a guy where all Soonyoung wanted to do with him half the time was watch him mouth along to the words as he read, keep his palm flat against the jagged surgery scar he had along the side of his knee, looking like a white eel sliding down a long, sandy river.

Minghao makes him want to just sit in the back of a taxi and drive in circles forever, momentum turning their thighs into magnets stuck together, to tuck his chin into the crook of Minghao’s neck and smell his expensive cologne, watch neon lights roll across his face, let him pick the music, roll the windows down, annoy the damn driver with their behavior in the back seat.

The last plate clatters into the bottom of the sink, presumably to soak for a while. Minghao shakes out his hands, water droplets flying in every direction. Soonyoung hears the _thwip_ of the dish towel as Minghao pulls it off its hook. Back in the bedroom, the radio drones on, humming. 

“Do you like taxi cabs?” Soonyoung asks, staring at the ceiling. If he thinks hard enough, he’s pretty sure he can turn the radio off from here. 

“What?”

The textured surface of the couch gets caught in Soonyoung’s fingernail, and he tears it out, ruining the perfect crescent moon. “Twenty questions. Your version.”

“I think so. Especially the new ones that always smell like a fresh can of paint. And at night, when it looks like the meter is just floating up there by the dashboard. Weird question.”

The scabs on Soonyoung’s ankles itch. “Hm,” he says.

“You know you’re supposed to ask nineteen more questions, right?” Soonyoung listens to Minghao walking across the linoleum floor towards the couch, waits for his face to appear over the back of it, still scrubbing at a plate. “Should I take you back to the hospital?” 

Soonyoung looks at him, almost thinking that he could get used to this. Even with the itchy scabs and tingling nerve ending, the feeling that he just got dunked in a bath of highly carbonated water. But the truth is, he already _is_ used to it; Minghao with his dishtowel, bringing him apple crisps. Knowing where his extra shirts are. “Let’s not go back there,” Soonyoung says. His palms feel full of TV static. “Leave the dishes alone.” His hands open, then close. “Now you sit down. I can think of nineteen more.”

Soonyoung hasn’t seen a clock since he left the apartment in the morning, and time has become slightly less than real. It’s dark out, so it must be nighttime, but Soonyoung doesn’t know for how long, how close it might be to the sunrise. He’s frying eggs in the dark to throw over top of the last of the reheated kimchi-fried rice that’s been sitting on the counter all day, had to get Minghao to come and help him with the lighter just to get the burner going.

Maybe he should be worried about botulism, but Soonyoung figures a few minutes in the frying pan should do the trick well enough. Old rice has never hurt him. At least not yet. And he’s bored, stir crazy, can’t stand the proximity any longer. It makes him bolder than he ought to be. “Your turn,” Soonyoung says.

“Is it bigger than a bus?”

“It doesn’t really have a concrete size,” says Soonyoung.

“Is it warm or cold?”

He doesn’t have to think long on that one. “Warm.”

“Is it something I like?”

Soonyoung scrapes the crispy bits up from the bottom of the pan, his shoulders tightening. “I couldn’t really say.”

Minghao paces in the kitchen, leaning back against the opposite counter behind Soonyoung. “Is it that flu I had? Are you seriously still thinking about that?”

“That’s two questions,” he says, staring at the egg whites becoming opaque in the pan.

“Well, answer them both.”

“No, and no.”

“You’re getting better at this,” says Minghao. “Is it a place?”

“Nope.”

“Is it something in this room?”

“Yeah.”

“Abstract?”

“Sorta.”

Soonyoung can feel Minghao’s eyes boring into the back of his head. Two fish hooks, tugging. “Is it a feeling?”

Soonyoung needs to say yes, but finds he suddenly doesn’t know how to. He lets the silence stiffen, reeling, trying to think of something to backtrack on, replace his original answer entirely, but he comes up blank. Over and over again. He should probably have flipped the eggs by now, and they’re starting to get a char on the bottom. He turns around, leaning lightly against the short slab of counter next to the stove and part of the fridge. 

The air breathes between them. Minghao opens his mouth, then closes it, trying to recover the moment. Eyes wide as an olympic swimming pool. He leans faux-playfully to the side, intending to eye the frying pan. The room is starting to smell slightly acrid with the burning, the beginnings of wispy smoke. “Did you use any oil? Is that even a non-stick pan?”

Soonyoung blinks. Now he’s got no idea where he wants this to go, having expected Minghao to push on him a little harder. The eggs keep burning. He looks backwards at the clock on the stove out of habit, expecting the red-lit numbers instead of the flat blank of the unpowered screen. Minghao takes the spatula from him, static electricity shocking blue between them. It might as well be the only light in the entire city. Soonyoung levels a stare. “Those are your questions?”

Minghao turns his head to look at him, finding Soonyoung closer than expected. The corner of the fridge is jamming into the center of Soonyoung’s back, slightly dull and not at all painful. He wonders if the faint wisps of smoke are strong enough to make the fire alarms go off, or if the batteries in them have died yet. Minghao’s poker face wavers—just slightly. “No,” he says carefully. “They’re not.”

Soonyoung presses one hand down over Minghao’s, makes him leave the spatula in the ripping hot pan, handle sticking over the side of it. And he keeps looking for the place where he thinks doing this will hurt him, but he can’t find it. 

Soonyoung wants that taxi ride, so he steps forward, because it’s easier than telling Xu Minghao he loves him.

His hands find Minghao’s chest first, sliding skywards towards his neck, around towards the back of his head. Minghao’s hands skitter towards Soonyoung’s rib cage, and he makes a strangled sort of noise as Soonyoung draws their mouths together, the kiss close lipped and shy. When they draw apart Minghao huffs out a breath, but Soonyoung doesn’t open his eyes, because it’s not so nerve wracking if he can’t look, can’t see. Minghao lays one hand against Soonyoung’s face, fingers splayed halfway over his ear, burning red hot, and kisses him again.

The handle of the fridge jabs into Soonyoung’s back, just left of his spine. Minghao crowds him against it, one hand on either side of Soonyoung’s hips, solid and grounding. He kisses Soonyoung like it might as well be killing him not to. Insistent. 

For a minute, Soonyoung doesn’t even know what to do with his hands, slingshotting between how badly he’s been wanting this and the actuality of all his worst habits in love. But it’s Minghao—Minghao with a pair of vaporized sneakers, Minghao who asks what it felt like to die for a minute—so Soonyoung figures theres no one else to give the fuck up on giving up on love for but him, just reaches up and holds his stupid face between his hands, hoping he wont notice that his palms are probably clammy.

Minghao opens his mouth. Licks hotly into Soonyoung’s. Has him up on his tiptoes to avoid whatever noise he might make when Minghao’s thigh hits his groin, scrabbling blindly to reach and turn the burner off. When it clicks, Minghao moves him, dragging him by the hips out of the kitchen and towards Soonyoung’s bedroom. The distance isn’t actually as expansive as it feels in the steps it takes to get to the threshold, and the mismatch is over in seconds. When they reach it, Minghao stops, making this face like he isn’t sure he’s actually allowed to be here. To be doing this. 

Soonyoung nudges him forward, love blind, walking Minghao backwards towards his bed, climbing on his lap when his knees hit and he sits down on the end of it. Minghao stays upright, kissing him more firmly, fingers flitting down the buttons of Soonyoung’s flannel, a worn-out cotton thing he’s always sleeping in that's been laundered into oblivion, color fading. It’s probably the most unsexy thing Soonyoung owns, isn’t helped along by the fact that its accompanied by a pair of cheap old sweatpants and the increasingly relevant reminder that he didn’t bother to wear any underwear beneath it.

Minghao switches the angle of the kiss, teeth grazing on Soonyoung’s lip. The last button pops open. When he pulls back, he tilts his forehead against Soonyoung’s face, looking down at his handiwork, spreading his palms along Soonyoung’s shoulder, shoving the collar of his shirt slightly aside. He kisses the underside of Soonyoung’s jawline. Let’s himself fall back on the mattress

Unbuttoned, Soonyoung’s shirt cascades open around Minghao like a gauzy curtain.

The electrode stickers are still littered across his ribs and chest from when they took an EKG, wired his heartbeat into visible data, bright green against the black screen. Minghao pulls the tab of one until it peels off, leaving the skin beneath it pink and irritated. Minghao goes for another one, his nail scraping up under the edge of it, catching on the ridge of one rib. Soonyoung squirms, embarrassed by it.

“That tickles,” he says. A lie. Easier than saying he feels like an orange being peeled, or somebody learning to swim for the first time.

Minghao sticks that half peeled electrode back down, his thumb smoothing the folded brim of it, letting the hand drop to Soonyoung’s hip before it draws back and Minghao lifts himself up onto his elbows, twisting the hem of Soonyoung’s shirt between his fingers.

Soonyoung leans closer. Out the window, the world is dark and primordial, a flat of black velvet stretched from one sill to the other.

“Soonyoung,” Minghao starts, his eyes wide as serving platters, then stops. The words catch in his throat, and he swallows them down. “Hyung, I—”

Soonyoung kisses him. This feeling—it’s sloughing off him like steamed wallpaper in layers, in waves, too warm and sticky, difficult or near impossible to wash off. He can’t listen to Minghao right now. Can’t bear it. His weight flattens him to the bed. Soonyoung can’t feel his hands, winces as an ache spreads from his ankle to his knee, careening up past his hip to the shoulders, his chest. His eyes are closed, but he swears the lights flicker.

And alright; so maybe Soonyoung’s got lightning in a bottle.

Now how the fuck was he supposed to keep it in the bottle?

Soonyoung wakes up with his back firmly against the wall, corralled into one side of his bed. Minghao looks to be in the half-conscious state it’s easy to get stuck in, his breathing slow and deep. Soonyoung touches his ear, tracing the shell of it down to the piercings he usually remembers to take out before turning in for the nights. That rouses his slightly, and he blinks twice, entire face scrunching up as he adjusts to the light, registers the things around him; tacky sci-fi posters, a wheelbarrow worth of dead electronics, his own stray sweatpants, and most relevant of all, Kwon Soonyoung.

“Hey,” Soonyoung says, lacking better words.

Minghao sits up, eyes almost shifty, like he’s looking for a way out. A way to have not done what he just did. “I should probably go home,” he says. “Make sure Mingyu hasn’t died of starvation or something yet. Um...unplug all my lamps from the wall.”

Soonyoung sits up, too, watches as Minghao starts untangling his legs from the blankets, adjusting his clothing to proper apparel again. He slides his feet over the edge of the bed, planting them on the rug. There’s a splotchy hickey at the juncture of his shoulder and neck, plum colored and shifting as Minghao moves. If waking up in the hospital was the moment before the moment, this is the moment he was talking about. 

“Myungho,” Soonyoung says, sort of desperately. Stupidly.

Minghao gives him a pleading kind of look. Adjacent to the puppy eyes. “I should really go,” he says again. It’s a statement, not a question. Soonyoung watches his eyes flick down to Soonyoung’s chest; similar bruises, the faint red hatchwork of nail marks. “I’m sorry, I took things too far. We must have just been—stir crazy. I didn’t mean to…” He trails off, looking down. He must notice the state of his shirt, face twisting. He touches the dresser, hand flat to the top of it. “Would it be okay if I borrowed a sweater?”

Soonyoung furrows his brow, frowning. “Of course,” he says, then backtracks. “But you don’t have to—there’s no need for you to—”

“There is,” he says.

Soonyoung winces, stiffening. “Why are you...I’m sorry if _I_ took things too far.”

“You didn’t. It’s okay.”

“It doesn’t seem okay if this is your reaction!” he snaps. Minghao’s eyebrows quiver. Soonyoung looks at Minghao’s knees, the floor. “Sorry, I just—it’s early, and ... You didn’t exactly give me any signs that you wanted to... so it’s my fault. You were the same as always. I was the one acting strange.”

“Hyung,” Minghao starts, “You weren’t being strange. I…” Minghao shakes his head and starts searching through the dresser again.

“You what?” prods Soonyoung.

“I’ve always liked you,” Minghao blurts, finally. He looks supremely embarrassed, but regardless, he barrels on. “That’s why my behavior never changed.” 

Minghao does self restraint with a religious sort of dedication. If Soonyoung’s the reigning king of giving in to his more basal desires, Minghao moves through the world like it’s a life or death imperative to do the exact opposite. Minghao does not do hangovers, does not do emotionless one night stands, has never called Soonyoung up at four in the morning on a Tuesday and spilled the metaphorical beans about how hey, is there something, like, seriously wrong with me that makes dating me some kind of impossible task? Because if there is I need you to tell me right now.

“If you don’t want…” Minghao starts. “If that feels like I’ve been lying, or if you didn’t mean for anything, I’ll leave, and think of it as a one time thing. Or not think of it at all.”

“It’s not lying to be shy,” Soonyoung says. “If it makes you feel better, Mingyu told me your power was back on at three o’clock yesterday and I willfully omitted that from our conversations.”

“That’s not the same,” says Minghao.

Soonyoung takes a step closer. “Okay, how about this one; I’ve been able to turn the power back on this whole time. I just wanted you to stay and not go home.”

Minghao’s face scrunches up, confused. “That’s not true. KEPCO said half the grid in the city is completely shot.”

Soonyoung searches for a way to explain. “It’s like Godzilla in the middle of _Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla,_ 1974,” he says. “End of the second act.”

Minghao blinks, unfazed. “I never watched that.” Pause. “I kind of can’t believe that you think I would.”

“I told you to watch it!”

“When?”

“Like—last summer—that’s not the point—what I’m saying is that in this scenario, I’m Godzilla.”

Minghao lifts a brow, amused. “Okay?”

Soonyoung huffs. Presses a palm to the wall, a few inches from the light switch for the living room. The ceiling light buzzes, then crackles to life, flickering briefly before Soonyoung drops his hand back to his side and it flickers off again. Minghao continues staring.

“You’ve been able to do that the whole time?” he says, incredulous.

“Sorry,” Soonyoung says, guilty. “If the power stays off any longer, I’ll be charging my phone to play Lineage M in secret while you sleep.”

Minghao laughs, high and tinny. Soonyoung feels a smile stretch across his face, glittering like a scar. 

“So is that the same? Or close enough?”

Minghao shakes his head, once, twice, realizing how far the conversation has derailed. He runs both hands through his hair, pulling hard enough to give himself a momentary facelift, his bangs sticking funnily up. “It’s not,” he says. “Those things aren’t...I’m being serious—I—” Minghao tosses his hands around, making crazy shapes. As if he can’t believe this is his life. He looks like a fish taking in water. The words escape him, and his hands card back through his hair again, holding his head. 

“Why are you being so weird about this,” Soonyoung starts. “I’m trying to tell you that I—”

“I watched you die!” Minghao says, firm. 

Soonyoung—laughs! He hugs himself a little as he does it, head tilted back. He eyes Minghao, grin wicked and wide. “It was kind of sexy of me, though, wasn’t it?”

Minghao must be half a second from strangling him. “No! You died! Do you have any idea what that was like for me?”

Soonyoung’s jaw drops open, but the smile doesn’t go anywhere. “You love me,” he says. It’s a mix of disbelief and good humor, half an accusation. “Seo Myungho, you _love_ me!”

Minghao’s face, previously so stormy and twisted in some misplaced anger, softens. Just instantly. Like butter into a smoking hot pan. Totally candle waxing it. “Hyung,” he says. Then nothing else.

Soonyoung wants to ask _how long?_ but from the look of things, the answer seems a lot like it’d be _the whole time,_ and Soonyoung doesn’t know how to respond to that. He tightens his grip on the bedroom door frame, tethered. “Were you lonely?”

Minghao looks away, sideways, off towards nothing by the windows. “Stop,” he says.

“No.” If Minghao’s going to run away from him, let it be with nothing to hide. Let Soonyoung have the answers, at least. “Were you lonely? I want to know.”

“No,” says Minghao. “I wasn’t lonely.” He finds the will to look at Soonyoung again, gaze strong enough to see through steel. “I still had you without having you.”

"And you loved me.”

There’s the rough of it. “I do.”

Soonyoung waits for Minghao to go on, but he doesn’t. Just stands there looking like he wishes he could melt down through the floor. “Stop looking so embarrassed by it,” Soonyoung says. “I'm not upset with you.”

Minghao’s expression twists, approaching guilty. “I was your friend. I slept in your bed. I kissed you.”

“You did more than that,” Soonyoung says. 

“I know,” says Minghao. “I didn't mean to.”

That makes Soonyoung laugh again. “Of course you meant to,” he says. “I did, too.”

“Still,” says Minghao. “You were dead on some pavement a day ago. You’re not yourself. I feel like I took advantage of you.”

“You didn’t. Don't be sorry.” Soonyoung feels his heart start leaking out through his ribcage, gets a funny feeling under his nails like this is some grave he’s been busy crawling back out of. “I love you.” Like, a hundred trees falling over and everybody fucking hears it love you. Like if you told me Pacific Rim: Uprising was your favorite movie I’d grin and bear that steaming dumpster fire just to clock in some quality time kind of love you.

Minghao stares at him, face pink.

Soonyoung barrels on. “I love you,” he says, more certainty to it “I didn't realize until—yesterday.”

Minghao sputters, verging on a laugh. “How can you not realize?”

“Same way I don't need the lights to get around my apartment when it's dark. I’ve gotten used to everything being where it always was.”

Now Minghao really laughs. His face is red, blotchy with embarrassment, but his eyes glimmer. He touches his neck, moving as if to hide his flushed ears, then abandoning the motion halfway. “You're seriously comparing me to your couch right now?”

Soonyoung takes a step closer, timid. “Do you hate it?”

Minghao's smile wobbles, like he doesn't know what to do with his face again; a Minghao-specific kaleidoscope. That mesmerizing shit that doesn't need an outlet, or wires, no batteries. "No," Minghao says. "I don’t hate it. Not if it's you." 

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. there is absolutely no way someone who was struck by lightning / recently revived in the field would be released from the hospital same day but it makes sense if you get rid of your brain cells and close your eyes.  
> 2\. in godzilla versus mechagodzilla 1974, godzilla is struck by lightning and spontaneously acquires electrical superpowers.  
> 3\. you can find me on twitter @hochitown!  
> 4\. leave me a comment if you want! thanks 4 reading >:)


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